Where There's a Winchester, There's Hope
by K Hanna Korossy
Summary: As Time Goes By missing scenes: How do you process meeting your long-dead grandfather, then losing him again?


**Where There's a Winchester, There's Hope**  
K Hanna Korossy

Her voice was the first thing to penetrate the murk.

"Well, well, if Baby Winchester isn't awake."

It took a few moments, his head foggy and aching with concussion. Sam blinked several times, managing only a blurred view of the redhead hovering over him. It was enough. "Abaddon," he groaned, a little surprised he was even waking up. As memory trickled in, so did the weight of realizing elderly Larry Ganem and his wife were probably dead.

Her smile was blinding enough to make him squeeze his eyes shut again. "Smart boy. Must be Henry's genes."

He stopped trying to listen to her, focused instead on where he was. On the floor, obviously, and in a large empty space. Did every bad guy find an empty warehouse in which to conduct their business?

But the real question was: what was her business? Why was Sam even still alive?

"And here they are. You're on, handsome."

Before he could make sense of that, she was hauling him to his feet with demonic ease, keeping him upright as he tried to find his bones and balance. More or less upright, Sam squinted at the sounds coming from across the room.

Dean. He could recognize his brother's shape, stance, movements even half-unconscious. Then the figure standing next to him had to be Henry.

Sam swallowed down nausea and straightened slowly, taking his own weight, trying to see Dean's expression, figure out what was going on. Be ready to play his part.

Dean was mad at Henry; that much Sam was sure of. Abandoning family was the highest sin in his brother's eyes, and Dean knew better than Sam their father's pain at growing up fatherless. Even if Henry hadn't meant to desert his family, Dean wouldn't see it that way.

But Sam had also seen what Henry didn't know Dean well enough to: how rattled he was at having his family redefined, unexpectedly enlarged, just like when they'd discovered Adam. It had been him and Sam for so long, and all the crap even just the two of them had to deal with. The idea of… _more_ left Dean unbalanced.

So Sam was a little surprised to see Dean and Henry standing there together…until his vision sharpened enough to pick out that Henry's hands were restrained.

Crap, what was Dean doing?

And then he saw the tiny movement of Dean's head. _I've got a plan._

Sam's anxiety eased back a notch, even as he set his feet, trying to be ready for whatever it was his brother had in mind. His own hands were tied, but Dean would have seen that.

It was to be an exchange, him for Henry. And the key? Oh, right, the Men of Letters hideout key. Henry did not look happy as he passed Sam, and Sam couldn't help but apologize to him, wincing at Henry's terse brush-off. Was he a part of Dean's strategy, too? As he approached his brother, Sam could see nothing in his expression but a quiet relief at seeing Sam back and in one piece.

It didn't take long for things to turn south.

Henry did turn out to be in on the plan—Dean could be very persuasive when Sam's life was on the line—but it didn't stop him from being mortally injured. Even as he shot Abaddon, something that shouldn't have stopped her but somehow seemed to, Sam could see he was dying. The grandfather they barely knew, the dad their own dad was waiting for back home.

Henry died in his arms. And it was Dean's own tears that blurred the green of his eyes, not Sam's impaired view of him.

They'd both failed family, again. But he knew Dean would blame only himself.

00000

He lost some time after that. Somehow, Henry ended up laid out in a sheet on the back seat and Abaddon's…pieces bundled into the trunk, while Sam was slumped in the passenger seat. He remembered Dean pressing some pills and water on him, and maybe throwing up at some point, but that might've just been nauseous dreams. There were snatches of not quite reality, of Dean's cool hand on the back of his neck, of a blanket Sam huddled in, of soft, jazzy big band music.

He woke to a motionless car, the engine still ticking, Dean motionless in the driver's seat. His brother was focused on the windshield with a thousand-mile stare, hands still ten-and-two on the wheel.

Sam pushed up a little, groaning at the hot pain pressing against the inside of his eyeballs. Concussions sucked, even if their occasional healings/resurrections/restorations kept the effects from piling up like some punch-drunk boxer's. He smacked dry lips and shoved hair out his face.

"Where're we?"

Dean had turned as soon as Sam started moving, and he glimpsed the bleakness in his big brother's eyes for just a moment before it drained away, refocused on Sam. He'd always given Dean focus, a distraction from the pain he carried: some part of Sam always knew that even as he toggled between resentment at being needed like that and gratefulness that someone needed him like that.

"Men of Letters graveyard," Dean answered, voice a little raw. "How's your head?" Without waiting for an answer, he produced a bottle of water from somewhere and twisted off the cap before handing it to Sam.

He took a drink, rinsing the rancid taste from his mouth before realizing that part of it was the smell of blood in the car. He swallowed heavily, risking one more sip before handing the bottle back. "It's fine." The question was pro forma anyway: Dean would see the truth in his face, his movements. "You wanna bury Henry here?" Sam asked hesitantly. A hunter's funeral seemed almost ironic for a man who considered hunters "apes"…even if the two of them were the exception.

Dean's hand left the steering wheel to rub at his upper lip. "Maybe after we burn the body?" he offered, just as tentative.

Dean would never, ever say it, but Sam immediately got it: he needed to be relieved from responsibility, even if briefly. Sam straightened in the seat, relegating the pain to the back of his mind, strong and take charge so, for a little while, Dean wouldn't have to be. "Yeah. I think he'd want that."

"Yeah?" His relief was clear; Sam hadn't realized how emotionally on the ropes his brother was. Finding and losing your grandfather, almost losing your brother, facing down a super-demon, and discovering you had a legacy, apparently did that to you. Dean was nodding to himself, already regaining his footing. "Hey, you think we should send a note to Grandma Millie, let her know what happened to Henry?"

Sam snorted. "You even know where to reach her?" Sam could vaguely remember meeting her once in his life, and she hadn't exactly been the cuddly cookie-baking kind. Maybe being abandoned by your husband in the Fifties did that to you, or remarrying and starting a new life, but John hadn't been close to her and his sons even less so. And after Samuel, Sam was just as glad not to revive any grandparental ties.

Dean's mouth curved a little. "I can just see that postcard: 'Your husband didn't run out on you—he time-traveled and got killed in the next century. Sorry.'"

Sam couldn't help his own smile at the gallows humor that was sometimes what made their job tolerable. "I'll start gathering wood."

"Yeah, I don't think so, Drooly," Dean shot back, already starting out of the door as Sam swiped abashedly at his mouth. "You get the gas and salt outta the trunk without falling over or puking on my shoes again, then we'll talk."

But he was at his brother's side as they watched another Winchester burn, and sat on the ground next to him carving the simple grave marker while Dean laid their grandfather's ashes to rest.

00000

"He was doing the spell to go home to Dad when I found him."

They were on their way to Lebanon, to the "supernatural mother lode," whatever it was. Sam's head was still pounding and he'd leaned it back, eyes shut against the bright dawn, but Dean would know he wasn't asleep. He made an interested sound, not bothering to look.

"I stopped him," Dean continued, information becoming confession.

Sam frowned. "Stopped him, how?"

"Uh, knocked him out, actually."

He rolled his head to fix Dean with a baleful glare.

"He wasn't listening to me! Abaddon said she needed him and the key to trade for you."

"So you kidnapped him instead of letting him get back to his kid," Sam said wearily.

"I didn't kidnap him!" Off Sam's look, Dean nodded a shrug. "Okay, yeah, I sorta kidnapped him. But after we talked, he was on board. It was his idea to carve a devil's trap in a bullet to catch her."

"Huh." He'd wondered distantly about that, not enough to ask through the grating headache. "Well… I guess it was meant to be this way. I mean, if he went back, who knows how Dad might've been different? Could've totally screwed up the present."

"Or he wouldn't have gotten back some other way. Cas said you can't really change the past." Dean was quiet a moment, then summed it up softly, "Still sucks."

Sam sighed an acquiescence.

This would become one more thing Dean would shoulder, one more thing that would gnaw at him. But Sam couldn't help be glad they'd met their grandfather—their biological grandfather, not Grandma Millie's second husband—probably the side that carried the vessel bloodline, and that he'd gotten to know them a little, too. He had valued family as much as they did. And he'd been proud of them. That was something else Dean would tuck away deep inside, always having craved paternal approval, but it warmed Sam as well. He might've been named after his Grandfather Samuel, and taken after John in personality—according to Henry and Dean, anyway—but his love of books, of research and learning, that had come from Henry's side, and it felt like…finding a place. A root in the Winchester name he hadn't quite had before. And that…that was pretty amazing.

"So, this Men of Letters clubhouse, what do you think it is, some kinda storage unit?" Dean spoke up, and he actually sounded a little excited. "You think it's got any weapons?"

Sam's mouth quirked lazily at the car roof. "Maybe? Guess we'll find out soon." Find their legacy.

"Cool." A beat. "Maybe they've got a real samurai sword. Always wanted one of those."

Sam snorted a laugh. It made his head ache, but he didn't care. Actually, he felt strangely good considering his head was cracked, he smelled of blood and graveyard dirt, and they'd just buried both their grandfather and the strongest demon they'd ever come across.

He'd been looking for a purpose, a sense of belonging all this time—at school, as Ruby's pupil, with Amelia—and just when Sam felt like giving up hope, he'd actually found one.

"Or, hey, a bazooka! They had those in 1958, right? That would be _awesome_."

Well, besides the one he'd always had here, at his brother's side.

 **The End**


End file.
